


A Meeting in Valinor

by Oakwyrm



Series: Zabdûnel [2]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aman (Tolkien), F/M, Immortality, Lost Love, M/M, Reminiscing, Valinor, forgotten history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-20 15:22:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20677598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oakwyrm/pseuds/Oakwyrm
Summary: Gimli truly did not know what to expect when he first set sail for Valinor but never in his wildest dreams would he even begin to entertain the idea that he might there find a piece of the lost history of his people.





	A Meeting in Valinor

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Sansûkh](https://archiveofourown.org/works/855528) by [determamfidd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/determamfidd/pseuds/determamfidd). 

> Yeah just. Have this. It's here now.
> 
> (the Khuzdul is different here from the Khuzdul found in Sansûkh because I'm using a different dictionary)
> 
> Mouse over the Khuzdul to view translations.
> 
> (now slightly revised to be more fitting to the parts of Sansûkh canon I had forgotten)

“Well here is a sight I thought never to see,” spoke a soft voice from behind them. Odd it seemed to Gimli’s ears. Beautiful and musical and _old_, though no strain of age wore the vocal cords. So ancient it surely must be something out of a dream. At his side, Legolas’ sharp intake of breath made him tense as they turned but all of that tension bled away in awed confusion as he laid his eyes on the speaker.

Tall she stood, regal and proud. An Elf Queen of the most ancient days surely for she carried about her an aura of deep exhaustion and sorrow despite her regal stance. Her dark skin glowed under the light of the sun. Her hair, woven into a thick plait down her back, was decorated with jewels and many glittering beads. Many rings glittered on her fingers and just bellow her collarbone hung a beautiful pendant of deepest sapphire set in a fine setting in the shape of a teardrop. About her waist circled a fine belt and at her hip rested a sword. All made of the purest mithril, all clearly of Dwarven make, not even attempting at a style more favoured by the Elves. Indeed, had he only seen her clothing without her in them he might have thought her a Queen of the ancient days of legend sprung to life.

“A Dwarf in Valinor…” She regarded them with an unreadable gaze for a moment before she shook her head. “Forgive me, young ones, I forget myself. My name is Amarthandis.”

“My Lady,” Legolas spoke, breathlessly reverent. “I am Legolas Thranduilion and here with me is Gimli, son of Glóin. My husband.” Gimli bowed low, still too dumbstruck by seeing this ancient Elf so clad in the garb of his people to find any sensible words to string together. Silver-tongued indeed! Much good that silver tongue was doing him now when he truly needed it!

“Your husband…” she said and her dark eyes gazed not at them in that moment but into the far-flung past. Then she smiled and it was at once bright and terribly, unbearably sad. “Yes, so I see.” Her eyes fixed not on his, however, but on the bonding braid woven into his fine golden hair.

She crouched down before Gimli and gripped his shoulders, studying his face carefully. “I recognize that brow…” she spoke, her voice once again dreamlike, her eyes still in the far past. “You are of Durin’s line, nadnith?” Her accent was odd. Not one of someone speaking a language foreign to them but rather like someone speaking from the depths of time. The way she spoke the word, though he could understand what she had said, was so ancient it sounded almost foreign to his ears.

“Hardly a boy anymore, Lady, but aye that I am,” Gimli said, finally gaining control of his tongue. She laughed, a light and fleeting thing like a warm day before winter has truly left.

“Not by your count perhaps. And how fare the rest of his descendants? What news can you bring me of Durin’s folk? There are not many here who have ought to tell me of them.”

She took a step back to take a seat on the grass, inviting them to do likewise. Legolas and Gimli fair scrambled, as much as Gimli’s ageing joints would allow such a movement, to join her.

Gimli told her all he could. Recounted as much history as he knew, both recent and ancient. Told her of Aglarond and Erebor and the Iron Hills. Of great works of craft, triumphs, and tragedies, and the coming of Durin VII, his final life upon Arda so it was said. She closed her eyes as if keeping back tears as he told her of Moria and the fall of Durin VI.

They stayed there in the grass with Gimli speaking until the sun was almost set and his voice was hoarse. She held up a hand, then, to stop him and drew a great, shuddering breath and he saw that indeed there were tears in her dark eyes.

“Such suffering you have had to endure…” she spoke, but she was not speaking to him, her eyes fixed at a point somewhere above his shoulder before turning sharply to him. He was reminded once again of her unfathomable age as those bright, ancient eyes stared into his. “Akhminruki astû, Gimli Glóinul. Astu makhajmsu e ‘ukhjam. I do not know how I will ever begin to repay you even in the lengthened years this land will give you.”

“Ach, it is no problem, my Lady.” He worried at his lip, feeling once again like a dwarfling facing down an elder, a question burning in his mind which he did not know how to ask.

“You wonder how it is that I speak your language,” she guessed, a heavy sorrow he did not understand lingering behind her words. “How it is that I am dressed as I am, here in this undying land where no Dwarf has ever set foot before?”

“It had crossed my mind,” he admitted. Legolas squeezed his hand in a silent gesture of support.

Amarthandis sighed.

“It does not surprise me. All record of my name was lost long years ago.” She squared her shoulders, drawing her head high once again and as the setting sun caught in her hair almost he could see a crown atop it.

“Let me introduce myself again and undoubtedly create more questions for you than I give answers. I was Amarthandis of the Nelyar, then the Teleri among those who became the Sindar, one of them that woke at the shores of Cuiviénen countless years ago before the sun shone in the sky. That is who I am to you-” she turned her eyes to Legolas- “but to you -” she turned back to Gimli- “I am Amarthandis, Queen of Khazad-dûm, mother of Durin’s line.”

Gimli’s breath caught in his throat, his eyes snapped down to the pendant that hung about her neck. He wondered, for an instant, if it had been a gift. Perhaps even crafted by Durin’s own hand in the years before the Sun or the Moon were set in the sky. A gift for this Elf woman, ancient and sad, who sat staring into the past and saw Durin as he was when he first walked upon the earth before any other soul on Arda knew him.

His eyes skittered over the rings that adorned her fingers, yet among them, he found none which bore Durin’s emblem. He looked next to her hair and there he found what he had overlooked. On any other Elf it would have stood out like a beacon, as it did on Legolas, but the bonding braid that rested in her hair had looked so natural with the rest of her that he had not even spared it a second thought.

There were legends, of course, of Durin and his great love, his first and only love for though he had always married in all of his lives those matches had all been born from necessity. He would not speak of her to anyone, his first wife, she who would always hold his heart, more than to note that she had existed. That she had been his One and had been at his side before any other, and that still, he loved her even as he was reborn. That she had helped him build Khazad-dûm ere anyone else ever set foot in it.

There had been theories, of course. She was a daughter of one of the other forefathers, some claimed. Which one depended entirely on who you were asking. A Man, others insisted though this was less popular. Men did not wake until the Years of the Sun began, and Khazad-dûm was well established before that. Some few even speculated she was a Halfling, for no one knew much of anything of their origins.

_Never_ had anyone _dared_ suggest she was an Elf.

“Mamarlûna mi Durin, zabdûnel…” he breathed before a thought shouldered its way rudely to the front of his mind. “Perhaps Thorin had a point about the innate predilections of Durin's line,” he muttered, too stunned to reign his tongue in. He did not regret it, for his words startled a true laugh out of her.

“Now there is a story I would hear in full if you would tell it,” she said merrily.

“You are my ancestor,” he said as if testing the idea. She nodded, solemn once again.

“So I am,” she said. “Though there is no Elven blood to be found anywhere in your veins. I am so far removed from all of my descendants now, and from what I hear there have been few other matches such as mine.”

“Only two that I know of,” Legolas said quietly. “Gimli and I can have no children, and the other pair were separated by death before they could wed.”

“It does not surprise me. The world could not stay new forever. Wrongs were committed and resentment grew over long and bitter years.” She shook her head. “But come, tell me more of Arda since I left it. What of your families, how came this match to be so long after and through so much more adversity than mine?”

Gimli and Legolas looked at each other, each trying to decide where to start the tale. Gimli was the one to take the reigns, starting the story off in Mirkwood long ago where an arrogant Elven princeling had just taken a party of Dwarves captive and the dismissive insults he tossed at the portrait of a young Dwarven lad.

**Author's Note:**

> **Khuzdul**  
nadnith – young boy  
Akhminruki astû, Gimli Glóinul – I thank you wholeheartedly, Gimli son of Glóin  
Astu makhajmsu e ‘ukhjam – You have given me a great gift  
Mamarlûna mi Durin, zabdûnel – She who is loved by Durin, Queen of all Queens
> 
> I do not claim that any of this is in any way correct by the point is I tried, alright?
> 
> Thank you, I shall see myself out.
> 
> Come yell at me on [tumblr](http://oakwyrm.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/oakwyrm)


End file.
